Part   I

How to Write the Right
Words and Sentences

1

The Right Words, The Right Stuff

 

What You’ll Learn_________________________

A few broadcast stories depend strictly on pictures, a few strictly on sound. But the rest? They depend mainly on words. Words you understand. Words everyone understands. So that’s where this book will start. The right words. The right stuff.

Probably by the time you’re in high school and certainly when you’re in college, you walk into a new course and the teacher hands you a syllabus. You read it, you discuss it, hopefully you abide by it, and maybe you even tell friends who will be taking the course the following semester about it. But does anyone ever actually explain the word “syllabus,” let alone define it? No one did when I was in school.

That’s why, when I started teaching journalism and a dean asked me to “prepare a syllabus,” I wasn’t really sure what to do, because I wasn’t really sure what it meant. I had seen and used plenty of syllabi (that’s even worse; at least “syllabuses” is a more acceptable plural form of “syllabus”), but nothing in life had ever forced my brain to instinctively understand the word.

This leads me to the whole point of this chapter: when you’re writing for a news broadcast (and this is a good rule for newspaper writers too), don’t use words your audience wouldn’t use in normal conversation. Don’t use words they may not be able to envision. Don’t use words they won’t easily understand. And don’t use words that sound judgmental, because that’s not your job. It obstructs the process of communication, when you’re supposed to enrich it. How can you avoid these pitfalls? By using the shortest and simplest words possible. Short, simple, unambiguous, descriptive, active, fair, everyday English.

This chapter is simply about words you ought to use, and others you shouldn’t. Simple, huh?

The Never Ending Story

Short Is Better than Succinct

Here is an example of a sentence where the writer uses a sophisticated, less conversational word, instead of a simple one:

The automobile crashed into the house.

It’s straightforward, it’s accurate. But it’s not as short and simple as possible. What would be?

The car crashed into the house.

As a speaker and writer of the English language, you have a heavier burden to bear than journalists who work in any other language on earth. Why? Because the English language has more words—616,500 of them, according to the Oxford English Dictionary—than any other language on earth. There are remote (and disappearing) languages in Asia and Africa whose entire word count is only in the tens of thousands. Writers in these languages don’t have to grapple with the burden of choosing between “vessel,” “boat,” or “ship.” You do.

Eventually in your journalism career, choosing the shortest and simplest words in our language (or any language) will be second nature, but until it is, consciously ask yourself whether you are using the shortest, simplest words in the sentences you write. When you are proofreading, make this one of the tasks on your checklist.

Why is it important? Because in a TV or radio news story, the audience hears your words only once. The fewer complexities you throw at them, the more easily they’ll absorb everything they hear. Think about the following pairs of sentences that might appear in news stories, and about which version—after simplifying a single word—seems better. Read them all aloud; the differences will be even more transparent:

He said he didn’t comprehend why his wife killed herself.
He said he didn’t understand why his wife killed herself.

The councilwoman says she wants to revise the speed limit.
The councilwoman says she wants to change the speed limit.

The attorney is charged with contempt.
The lawyer is charged with contempt.

Police apprehended the suspect.
Police caught the suspect.

She was murdered outside her residence.
She was murdered outside her home.

And here’s the best example to test what you’ve learned so far:

The student saw the syllabus and decided to drop the class.
The student saw the course outline and decided to drop the class.

See which one works better? The second one, every time. In fact in the last example, more (slightly more) is best, if more is simpler.

What’s the Point?

Although there are exceptions, the basic principle here is as true with individual words and phrases as it is with whole sentences (which you will read about later in the book): shorter and simpler almost always is better. In other words, although you want to avoid the unstructured nature of spontaneous conversation (such as repetition, putting your own words into parentheses, pronouns without reference), write the way you talk!

Learn These, for a Start

Here are two lists of words. The list on the left has words most people probably understand, while the list on the right has words that are undoubtedly shorter and simpler and understood by all. Almost without exception (yes, like most rules, there are exceptions), the words on the right side are the ones you should use in news stories.

For Example … Words to Live By

This list isn’t even close to complete. The purpose here is not to memorize the shorter, simpler version of every longer, more complex word or phrase in the English language. It is to think about the words you write—especially nouns and verbs—and get yourself into the habit of choosing the best ones.

By the way, several of the words on the left side of the box—words like “apprehend,” “deceased,” “female,” “intoxicated,” and so forth—are used in everyday speech by people in law enforcement. (Wouldn’t the word “police” probably work better than “people in law enforcement” at the end of that sentence?) But just because they use them, doesn’t mean you have to.

What’s the Point?

Besides being a communicator, think of yourself as a translator. Once again, the lesson is to write the way you talk.

Translating English into Better English

Here’s an example of the type of explanation you might hear from a police officer at the scene of an accident. It employs (wouldn’t “uses” be better than “employs”?) words from the left side of the box you just studied. Read the explanation aloud, and see what you would change:

Several persons observed the male driver weaving between lanes in the blue vehicle. Subsequent to apprehending him, officers conducted a sobriety examination and determined that he was inebriated. The driver, who is presently incarcerated, resides at 123 Main Street. The deceased youth in the red vehicle has not yet been identified.

If you want to convey it precisely but come up with better words for the audience to absorb, here’s a rewrite that works. Here are corrections for all the word flaws you should have caught:

Several people saw the man in the blue truck weaving between lanes. After catching (or stopping) him, officers did a sobriety test and decided he was drunk. The driver, who lives at 123 Main Street, is now in jail. The dead boy in the red car has not yet been identified.

Okay, that is easy enough to translate. But what do you do when someone in law en-forcement—or someone in what’s known as “public safety”—lays a sentence like this on you:

The chemicals spilled from the truck when it overturned, but we have a hazmat team on its way.

A “hazmat team?” Maybe you know what that means—do you?—but many in your audience probably don’t have a clue, unless they work in public safety or journalism. Yet words and phrases which insiders understand often get written into news stories, which means outsiders only get confused. “Hazmat,” for example, is verbal shorthand for “hazardous materials,” so a “hazmat team” means the people who, among other things, know how to clean up chemical spills.

But as soon as you use “hazmat” in a story, your audience is distracted. All over your viewing or listening area, people are thinking, “Hmmm, I wonder what ‘hazmat’ means?” As soon as they start thinking that, they are no longer thinking about anything else you’re telling them. In other words, once you’ve given the audience a distraction, you’ve lost them and may not get them back for the duration of the story.

The same problem can come up with other kinds of “insider” words and phrases, the kinds of things you might have heard a million times but don’t really know or understand. If you’re covering a fire and you’re told that it started in the “tool and die” department, do you know what that means? Probably not. If you don’t, neither will the audience (it’s where new tools are forged). Likewise, when covering a plane crash, don’t just report that investigators suspect a problem with the “ailerons.” If you don’t know what ailerons are, find out and explain them in your story. If you do know, explain them anyway, because you’re in the minority.

What’s the Point?

Make sure you don’t use words or phrases that you don’t understand. And even if you understand them, make sure that you and your information source aren’t the only ones who do!

Translating Other Tongues into English

It’s great if you speak a foreign language, but it’s awful if you write foreign words for an English language audience, just because you understand and maybe even use them yourself. Unless your whole audience speaks the foreign language at least as well as you do—which of course it doesn’t—people simply won’t understand what you’re trying to tell them.

For example:

Her nom de plume is Julie Jupiter.

Or:

They declared a jihad on Americans.

There’s not a broadcast audience in America in which everyone understands those foreign words. What’s more, because the words are a distraction, you may lose the audience’s attention. More often than not, writers intent on showing off (and inadvertently distracting their audience) use French words and phrases, perhaps because French once was the worldwide language of diplomats.

Even Latin, a dead language from the past, is alive and well in written and spoken English. It’s especially popular with lawyers and churchmen, but sometimes it’s popular with journalists too. It shouldn’t be. Examples of foreign words in English language news stories are endless, but below is a handful that I’ve heard in stories, without any explanation to clarify their meaning for the audience:

I’m not going to translate these, or any others, for you. Why not? Because then you might think it’s okay to write sentences like these:

Her nom de plume, or “pen name,” is Julie Jupiter.

They declared a jihad, a “holy war,” on Americans.

If you want to tell your audience what her pen name is, or what the radicals have declared, just do it, short and sweet and unadorned:

Her pen name is Julie Jupiter.

They declared a holy war on Americans.

You don’t have to totally discontinue your use of foreign words. In fact, we have adopted plenty of foreign words into English, and they are perfectly okay to use. Most of us probably don’t even consciously remember that words like rendezvous and chauffeur are French! We know what a sombrero is, and we wouldn’t know any way but the German way to refer to the third Reich. So when words like these are the best ones to convey meaning in an English language sentence, by all means use them. But think. Think about the difference between foreign words we all use in English, and those we don’t.

What’s the Point?

You’re not writing for an audience so you can show off. You’re writing so you can show them the elements of a story in language they’ll understand.

Be Dynamic When You Can

You’re also writing so you can “involve” your audience in the story you’re reporting. This means a few things:

1. Whenever possible, the present tense is better than the past tense.

2. Whenever possible, active voice is better than passive voice.

3. Whenever possible, a descriptive word is better than a dull word.

Here’s what each of these points means.

Don’t Get Tense over the Tense

Let’s start with the tense of your main verb. Which of these two sentences, both telling the same story, sounds more active, more immediate, more dynamic, more alive? (Read them aloud and you’ll get a better sense of the right answer.)

The mayor said he didn’t take a bribe.
The mayor says he didn’t take a bribe.

Sure, the news conference at which the mayor made his statement is over; the story may be half-a-day old. But is there anything wrong with the second version? No. Why not? First, if you were to go back and ask the mayor the same question right now, his answer (presumably) would be the same. Secondly, it’s part of an ongoing news story. Perhaps yesterday you reported the charge against the mayor; today you report the mayor’s response to the charge; tomorrow you’ll report some other angle of this continuing story. “The mayor says…” will be accurate until and unless he changes his tune!

This leads to a quick review of a lesson you first learned years ago: the three tenses you’re likely to use (four, if you count the future tense, which we won’t bother with in a discussion of news stories).

• Present tense is used for something that’s happening right now, or at least hasn’t stopped happening.

• Present perfect tense is used for something that is over by the time you say (or write) it, but which does not imply any particular time, or something which might still be happening.

• Past tense is used for something which has ended, and only can be considered in the past.

So read (aloud) the following pairs of sentences, and see if you agree that even though the past tense is not inaccurate, whenever possible the present tense, or present perfect tense, is better:

There were six survivors from the plane crash.
There are six survivors from the plane crash.

Rain soaked the baseball field.
Rain has soaked the baseball field. (present perfect)

The announcement of a tax increase angered some congressmen.
The announcement of a tax increase angers some congressmen.

None of this means the past tense should be relegated to the past. Sometimes the present tense simply doesn’t work. For example, if the president is on an overseas trip and arrived eight hours ago in India as you’re writing your story, the present tense in this sentence doesn’t make sense:

The president lands in India.

Neither does this one:

The president is landing in India.

But does that mean you are only left with the past tense? If so, then your only choice is:

The president landed in India.

Well, that’s accurate but it’s not your only choice. You may not remember the strict meaning of “present perfect tense,” but here’s how—and where—you use it:

The president has landed in India.

Now, reread aloud the last two examples, and see which one you think makes the sentence more active, more dynamic, and more alive:

The president landed in India.
The president has landed in India.

There’s no contest, is there? By using the present perfect tense rather than the past tense, you are telling your audience that while the action isn’t still going on, it hasn’t been superseded by something else.

Of course, there are times when the past tense is the only tense you should use. Here are a few examples:

The coastline was destroyed by last year’s hurricane.

This is better than:

The coastline has been destroyed by last year’s hurricane.

The Broncos lost the 1986 Super Bowl.

Rather than:

The Broncos have lost the 1986 Super Bowl.

She slipped on a banana peel.

This certainly makes more sense than:

She is slipping on a banana peel.

While this book isn’t long enough to cover every possibility, here are a few more examples for you to read aloud and think about. Think of them all as stories that are happening as you are writing. Your job as a writer is to decide when you can accurately use the present tense, when you can’t use the present tense but the present perfect tense is okay, and when you must use the past tense.

The ship rams the dock.
The ship has rammed the dock.
The ship rammed the dock.

A car is hitting a bike.
A car has hit a bike.
A car hit a bike.

Miss Smith is winning the election.
Miss Smith has won the election.
Miss Smith won the election.

Every flower is blossoming.
Every flower has blossomed.
Every flower blossomed.

It’s not so easy, is it? In the third and fourth examples, you really have to decide between the first (present tense) and second (present perfect tense) sentences. They both work, but that’s what makes your job as a writer so tough: you have to choose the one that works best, the one that dynamically but accurately tells the audience what’s happening right now!

So although the audience doesn’t stop and consider the implications of the tense you choose for every verb, the choice you make does send a message. It tells viewers and listeners whether the action in a story is ongoing or finished. And because it affects the dynamic sound of your story, it can determine whether people pay close attention or not.

Active versus Passive

What’s the difference between active and passive voice? The answer to this question also helps determine the audience’s attention level. Go back to a few examples from the last section.

Instead of, the mayor says he didn’t take a bribe, would you write, no bribe was taken by me, the mayor says?

No, of course not. The first version is active (do you remember “subject, predicate,” etc., from those early grammar lessons in school?). The second is passive, as well as awkward.

But how about a slightly less obvious contrast: rain has soaked the baseball field, versus the baseball field has been soaked by rain? Neither is awkward, but still, the first version is more active, not to mention shorter and to the point.

Exceptions? Sure, as always. If a president gets shot, you don’t write, somebody has shot the president, which follows the rules of good grammar. No, you write it the other way—the president has been shot—because in this hypothetical case, the object (the president) is the most important thing in the sentence.

Descriptive versus Dull

Here’s a perfectly decent sentence from a news story:

The sheriff knocked down the front gate, went quickly into the house, and took possession of the counterfeit bills.

Decent, but not very exciting, is it? Wouldn’t this be better?

The sheriff rammed the front gate, rushed into the house, and seized the counterfeit bills.

Of course, a word like “rammed” has a pretty narrow definition. You shouldn’t use it if it isn’t accurate in the context of your story. But if it is, then isn’t it more dynamic, more colorful, and more descriptive than “knocked down?” The same is true for “rushed,” which tells the audience so much more than the earlier words, “went quickly.” And “seized,” if it’s a fair description of what the sheriff did, tells us much more about the speed and intensity of the sheriff’s actions than “took possession.”

The trouble is, sometimes writers use dynamic words for the purpose of creating a picture in the viewer’s or listener’s mind, but the viewer or listener doesn’t have any idea what kind of picture he should see. For example:

The senator stalked out of the room.

Excuse me? She “stalked” out of the room? Does that mean she “slithered?” If it does, what exactly is “slithered?” Does “stalked” suggest movement that’s blistering, belligerent, dispirited, or something else? Words matter, and with the burden of so many words to choose from an English language dictionary, you must go to pains to choose words that are descriptive, yet accurate.

But don’t automatically reject a colorful word. We can conjure up a better version of a foreign government’s harshness, assuming it’s accurate, if we write that its army “smothered” a revolution, rather than that it “put down” the revolution. “Smothered” works because everyone who hears it understands it. On the other hand, if you write that the army “asphyxiated” the revolution, even though “asphyxiate” and “smother” are synonymous, it doesn’t convey the same meaning. For that matter, “asphyxiate” is used seldom enough in everyday conversation that some of the audience might take so long to process the word that they stop absorbing whatever follows. That’s instant death in a broadcast news story.

Judgmental Verbs May Be Accurate, But Wrong

What will people think if they hear the following sentence in a newscast?

The city controller claims he doesn’t know who put the money in his safe.

There’s a “nod-nod-wink-wink” quality to the word “claims.” It’s as if the reporter is saying, “Look, he claims he doesn’t know, but nod-nod-wink-wink, you and I know better!”

Or think about this sentence:

The councilwoman concedes that she met with the local crime boss.

Here too, what will the audience infer? “Well, if she now concedes that, she must have been lying before.” (By the way, learn the difference between “infer” and “imply.” They are often confused. If you “infer” something, it means you figure it out from someone else’s words. If you “imply” something, it means you intend to convey a message with your own.)

Once again, words matter, because the words you use as a reporter can make the difference between the appearance of stating a fact and the appearance of stating an opinion. Look at the two examples above; the words can be unjustly harmful. If you know in the first example that the city controller is lying, then “claims” is a perfectly appropriate word for you to use. But if you don’t know, then it would be better to use a word like “insists” or even the safe but dull old standby, “says.” If you don’t definitely know that the city controller is lying, “claims” is unfair.

Likewise in the second example, instead of “concedes,” you could substitute a word like “confirms,” or of course, “says.” Now, read each sentence again, with each of the two substitutions that take the judgment out of the hands of the writer and put it into the hands of the audience:

The city controller insists he does not know who put the money in his safe.
The city controller says he does not know who put the money in his safe.

The councilwoman confirms that she met with the local crime boss.
The councilwoman says that she met with the local crime boss.

Less judgmental, more fair. Isn’t that part of every journalist’s ethical obligation? You bet it is! (You’ll read a lot about your obligations as a journalist in the chapter entitled, “Holding onto Your Ethics,” about ethics and their impact on good news writing.)

For Example, Words to Choose From, Carefully!

Judgmental Adjectives and Adverbs are Usually
Dreadfully Unnecessary

If you’re writing a story about a murder, does the audience learn anything valuable if you add an adjective and describe it as a “senseless murder”? Of course not; all murders are senseless.

Or are they? If someone had gotten to Adolph Hitler and killed him before he finally killed himself, it might have been murder but it hardly would have been “senseless.” To the contrary, it would have almost universally been praised as a justifiable act, and depending on when it happened, it might have saved the lives of millions and therefore been quite sensible, rather than senseless.

See how words matter? Even something seemingly as obvious as using “senseless” in front of the word “murder” may itself be senseless!

And how about the “reckless driver” we hear so much about in newscasts? When you see the damage a driver caused as she careened from parked car to parked car, it’s hard to conclude anything else. But aren’t there other plausible explanations? Maybe she was having a heart attack. Maybe she was having an argument. Maybe she was repaying her neighbors for setting fire to her house. Who knows? Sometimes at least, the answer to the question, “Who knows?” is, “Not us.”

This is not to say that there is no such thing as a “reckless driver,” but it is to say that until a journalist knows without question that a driver was completely cavalier and uncaring about the consequences, the word “reckless” may not be accurate, and therefore should not be used. Let the audience decide. They probably won’t have much trouble.

Adverbs can be just as troublesome, and put you in the position of making unethically judgmental observations. What’s wrong if you write this sentence?

The governor dressed sloppily and came to the news conference.

Who appointed you as the guardian of good fashion? Does “sloppily” mean the same thing to everybody as it means to you? There are some people who think it’s sloppy if your pants are wrinkled or your shoes are scuffed. Others think that unless you have tomato stains smack dab in the middle of your shirt, you look perfectly neat, thank you very much! Is a polka dot necktie on a paisley shirt sloppy, or just ugly? (See, that’s my own value judgment! Not everyone would agree.)

Now let’s look at one more example of a judgmental adverb, one with potentially serious consequence if it’s indiscriminately used:

The vice president carelessly pushed the dog out of his way as he came into the meeting room.

If you write that, the vice president loses the animal lovers’ vote for sure! But is that fair? Maybe he just didn’t want the dog in the room and so he pushed it out, but what’s “careless” to some might be “gentle” to others. Anyway, what is the audience to conclude? That the vice president pushed out the dog with his hands or with his feet? Did he give it a forceful but gentle push, or a swift kick? What’s more, maybe the vice president did whatever he did because he didn’t want to take the chance that someone would step on the dog’s paws. That would be more like “lovingly” than “carelessly.”

The big picture is, aside from purely factual adjectives and adverbs—“the blue car ran off the road,” or, “he drove quickly to the police station”—you’re better off keeping them out of your stories. I won’t say they serve no purpose, but I will say that the only purposes they usually serve are to inject bias into a story that doesn’t need it, and to expose the writer’s bias to the audience.

Your job is to be objective. And to give the appearance of objectivity. If through a bad choice of words you fail on the second count, it means the audience believes you have failed on the first.

What’s the Point?

You can write almost entirely without judgmental adjectives and adverbs. You can certainly write without judgmental verbs. Your job is to let people in the audience reach their own conclusions, not to hit them over the head with yours.

Exercises to Hone Your Word Skills________________

1. The Never Ending Story
Here it is again, the Never Ending Story. Rewrite it now by substituting better words for bad, and removing words that don’t belong at all. Don’t make any other corrections; they’re for later chapters.

2. The Ever-Improving Story
Remembering the “Words to Live By,” write a better broadcast version of the following sentences (your instructor may want you to read each version aloud in the next class, for every-one to hear the difference between each set of versions):

3. The Ever-Less-Confusing Story
Write a better broadcast version of the following sentences:

4. The Much-More-Active Story
Write a better broadcast version of the following sentences:

5. The Rewritten Story
Write a better broadcast version of the following stories:

6. In case you thought you’d get away without knowing what an aileron is (in the example earlier in the chapter), write the definition of “aileron.”